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Thursday, February 28, 2013

..................................................................................................................................Why can't Washington compromise? They're too humanBy Connie Cass, February 24, 2013Turns out politicians are people, too, only worse.Just ask pros who make their living in the trenches of everyday human drama such as divorce, family feuds or schoolyard scraps. They recognize in Washington's bitter budget standoff a hint of human nature as they know it, but with the crazy pumped up to absurd levels."We're seeing middle school behavior here," says Barbara Coloroso, who crusades against childhood bullying. Psychologist Piers Steel, an expert on procrastination, says Congress has the worst case of it he's seen. Divorce attorney Sanford Ain's assessment is blunter: "It's nuts!"A sampling of conflict-savvy professionals and scholars interviewed by The Associated Press finds dismay that the nation is in political stalemate after two years of showdowns and near-misses for the economy. Not that these they have any easy solutions, either.Some dream of locking up President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner. R-Ohio, together until the nation's tax and spending issues are settled."That's my fantasy: To go into a room and tell them what to do, right or wrong, and make them do it," said Marvin McIntyre, a prominent financial adviser in the District of Columbia who writes political novels on the side.With lawmakers and the president on the brink of yet another compromise-or-else deadline Friday, the nonpoliticians shared their take on the all-too-human behavior in Washington.Historian Altina Waller is reminded of the Hatfields and McCoys. Of course, she would be: Waller's an authority on the deadly 19th century feud.Despite the myth, the Hatfield-McCoy conflict wasn't primarily about clan hatred, Waller said, and she doesn't think today's acrimony between Republicans and Democrats is fully explained by partisanship or ideology.The Appalachian feud grew out of economic anxiety as farming declined and logging and coal moved in, she said. These days, Democrats and Republicans worry about the economy and the loss of American jobs and influence to foreign competition, and blame each other."Like the Hatfields and McCoys," Waller said, "they are personalizing a problem brought about by larger economic forces."Coloroso, author of "The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander," sees too many politicians acting like the mean girl who taunts unpopular classmates in the cafeteria."Bullying is about contempt for the other person," Coloroso said. "Do you see how that fits with some of the people in Congress? Utter contempt, bullying, wanting to bring somebody down. You cannot resolve a major issue like a budget with name-calling, with disdain for the person you're supposed to be working with."Ain says the political fight illustrates something he's learned in 40 years of striving to keep family law cases amicable: "If you have extreme views and won't compromise, you can't get anything done. It's going to go to war."Yet a sudden switch to civility will not guarantee that tough decisions get made.Human brains are wired to put off the unpleasant, says "The Procrastination Equation" author Steel.We postpone starting a diet, put off going to the gym, keep meaning to write those thank-you notes. Congress members are masters of this."They're pretty much the worst, hands down, of any group we ever investigated," said Steel, who has researched procrastination for more than a decade. "They're worse than college students."What finally gets people moving? A deadline. The paper must be written to pass the class. The house is tidied because company's coming. The expense report is finished because the boss demands it by 5 p.m.So it makes sense to set deadlines for solving the nation's pressing fiscal problems. Only it isn't working.Congress and the White House have lurched from the brink of default or government shutdown or "fiscal cliff" to the next potentially disastrous deadline, this time automatic budget cuts known as the "sequester." They've only achieved temporary fixes without resolving the big disagreements over the deficit, taxes and Medicare and Social Security spending. Obama calls it "drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next."Why aren't the deadlines working?Pushing the limits isn't always procrastination; sometimes it's strategy.Negotiation expert Robert Mnookin points to labor disputes resolved just before the strike deadline and lawsuits settled on the courthouse steps on the eve of trial. Bargainers tend to play "chicken" like two drivers speeding toward each other in hopes the other will swerve first."It's often believed that you won't be able to extract the very best concession from the other side unless you are on the brink of something that's very bad," said Mnookin, chairman of Harvard's Program on Negotiation and author of "Bargaining with the Devil."Both the Republicans and Democrats have die-hards pushing to keep charging ahead."It's a hugely dangerous game to play," Mnookin warns, "because people aren't always rational in their behavior."What happens if Democrats and Republicans collide head-on this time? Some $85 billion in automatic federal budget cuts over the next seven months, with more in following years.Obama says that would weaken the military, disrupt programs Americans rely on, eliminate jobs and weaken the economy. Boehner calls it "an ugly and dangerous way" to reduce spending. These cuts were designed to be so distasteful that politicians would agree on more rational budget-cutting to stop them.But there's another way out. Lawmakers and Obama could agree to block the cuts, before or after they kick in, and once again postpone making big fiscal decisions that might cost some of them re-election.That's a problem with artificial deadlines: They're hard to enforce.Economist Christopher Kingston, whose research ranges from 19th century dueling to modern game theory, says what lawmakers need is a strong "commitment device." He cites the story of William the Conqueror burning his ships after his invading army landed in England, ensuring his soldiers couldn't retreat.A less reliable commitment device: A shopaholic cutting up his credit cards. That works unless he gets new ones and start running up debt again."It's really hard to create a commitment device artificially, particularly if you don't have an external power that's going to enforce it," said Kingston, an associate professor at Amherst College.Congress and the president have no judge, no referee, no board of directors. Washington won't hear from the voters again for two years, and even then the message may be unclear.With human nature against them, how can politicians escape gridlock?A few tips from the pros:• Shock them with kindness. "Try to do something unexpectedly nice for the other side," advises Ain, and your surprised opponent may reciprocate.• Avoid the "zero-sum" trap. Just because something is good for one side doesn't mean it's bad for the other. "There are all kinds of deals that the president and the Congress could make that would be better for the economy and the nation as a whole and in that sense would benefit them all," Mnookin says.• Get a mediator. Maybe the special 2011 deficit committee could have reached agreement with the help of a trusted outsider. It's worth a try, Ain says, because "that works in major litigation and all sorts of situations."• Shame the bullies. If politicians denounced their fellow party members who display contempt for the other side, Coloroso says, it would squelch the mocking tone.America's citizens also are mostly silent bystanders right now, the author said."What are we going to do about it?" she asked. "Do we just stand by and shrug our shoulders?"
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This week, Fox News fired Dick Morris, the former polling guru for Bill Clinton who has since reinvented himself as a Republican analyst and operator. Morris loudly predicted a landslide victory for Mitt Romney in the run-up to the November election, one of several ridiculous prophecies that quickly made him the laughingstock of his profession. As David Weigel at Slate writes, "No single human made as many wrong, botched, bogus, and stupid predictions about the 2012 election as Dick Morris."

Morris's ouster, which followed Fox ditching Sarah Palin, is being seen as evidence that the network — once happy to depart from the political narrative told by other mainstream media outlets — is concerned about its trustworthiness. The channel suffered a precipitous drop in ratings in January, and a recent poll by the liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling found that 46 percent of respondents do not trust the network. According to Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen at Politico:

For Fox, it’s about credibility: The cable network, while still easily the top-ranked in news, has seen its ratings dip since the election, in part, conservatives tell us, because a lot of Republicans felt duped by the coverage. [Politico]

Fox's ratings dip could be explained by other factors, such as the fact that conservative viewers may have tuned out President Obama's inauguration — which was a ratings boon for liberal MSNBC. Furthermore, Morris was a peculiar case, in that he used his platform at Fox to solicit money for his super PAC. "In the end, it became too obvious that Dick Morris wasn't working for the betterment of the conservative movement, or the Republican Party, or Fox News," says Paul Waldman at The American Prospect. "He was working for the betterment of Dick Morris."

Still, it's clear that head honcho Roger Ailes is moving in a new direction. The highly polarizing Sarah Palin is out, while Scott Brown, the moderate former senator from Massachusetts, is reportedly in talks to join the network. In addition, Fox stalwarts like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity have suddenly expressed openness to the idea of immigration reform, which would have been unthinkable before Romney was routed. Pundits "whose response to just about everything is to offer up red meat to the fringe of the party isn't exactly what Roger Ailes and co. are looking for anymore," says Matt Taylor at The Daily Beast.

The changes at Fox mirror an ongoing shift in the GOP, whose leaders are seeking to reform the party in the wake of Romney's defeat. According to VandeHei and Allen:

One high-profile Republican strategist, who refused to be named in order to avoid inflaming the very segments of the party he wants to silence, said there is a deliberate effort by party leaders to "marginalize the cranks, haters and bigots — there’s a lot of underbrush that has to be cleaned out." [Politico]

And so, once again, we return to the question of whether the changes at Fox, as well as the Republican Party as a whole, are merely cosmetic or real. Jonathan Chait at New York is skeptical, citing the moderate wing's unwillingness to challenge hardcore conservative beliefs:

In order to purge a party of crankish and bigoted sentiments, you would need to identify what those sentiments are. Climate-change denial? Opposition to gay marriage? "Self-deportation"? Railing against food stamps? Supply-side economics? …Moderate Republicanism is a secret creed — a set of beliefs that is expressed anonymously, but lacks any public standing to openly engage in a battle of ideas within the party. [New York]

But there are members of the GOP who are beginning to challenge conservative orthodoxy. More Republicans by the day are coming out in support of a path to citizenship for undocumented workers. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky gave a foreign policy speech yesterday in which he moved to the left of Obama on the issue of Iran's nuclear program. These seem to be seedlings of change. And that is where Fox and the GOP diverge: While the cable channel can change at Ailes' whim, the Republican Party's metamorphosis will be far slower.

..................................................................................................................................How conservatives are blowing it on health careObamaCare failed to truly rein in our nation's out-of-control health-care spending. This is a problem that demands conservative solutions

By Jeb Golinkin, February 26, 2013

Every member of Congress should be required to pass a test to demonstrate that they have read every word of "Bitter Pill," Steve Brill's astonishing 28-page TIME cover story, which uses the experiences of ordinary Americans to detail just how big a cluster you-know-what America's health-care system is. If you have not read it, it makes for heavy and highly emotional reading. You will be at times offended, at times confused, and at times just downright angry at the details that emerge. Most of all, the article is important because it explores, in considerable detail, the true source of our nation's fiscal problems: Health-care spending.

Conservatives in particular need to take notice of the problems that this article explores. Really, the GOP should treat each quandary like a math problem that needs solving. Put another way, the GOP must stop carping about ObamaCare and instead address all of the problems that the president's preposterously expensive piece of legislation did not sufficiently address. Intentionally or not, Brill tells a story that highlights the central problems that tomorrow's Republican Party must solve if it wants to reduce America's deficit and return our country to prosperity.

Of course, for years Republicans have acted on the assumption that America has the "best health-care system in the world," probably because most of their constituents seem satisfied enough with their coverage. Old people like Medicare, and polls indicate that those people who can afford health insurance like their policies. But as Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute and many others have noted, American wages are stagnant because the cost of health care has skyrocketed. In 1999, the average individual health insurance plan cost 11 percent of per-capita income. In 2010, it was 19 percent.

Put another way, whether you realize it or not, health care is getting more expensive without getting all that much better. And that surge in the cost of care is one of the central causes of America's fiscal crisis. Conservatives, of all people, should be offended by this trend. After all, it is driving the dire state of our fiscal health.

For all of ObamaCare's flaws (and there are many), Avik Roy has suggested that if Republican policymakers really gave a damn about policy (as opposed to just rhetoric), they would shut up about "repealing" the statute and refocus their energy on harnessing existing provisions to create more desirable policy outcomes. (Roy also makes a convincing case that conservatives should aspire to make our health-care system look more like Switzerland's…. Seriously, his arguments are very, very good.)

Republicans should be at war with the fee-for-service model of financing health-care reform. Presently, doctors are principally reimbursed for the services they perform rather than the outcomes they bring about. That means that under the prevailing model of medical reimbursement, a doctor who performs 20 tests on a patient will make more money than he would if he performed two — even if he achieved a superior or equally positive patient outcome by performing fewer tests and spending less money. Republicans who care about the deficit and believe in paying for superb care must find creative ways to rid the health-care system of the cancer that is fee-for-service billing.

Similarly, the GOP should focus on obliterating the regulations that liberal groups like the AMA have created and helped maintain (such as restrictions for retail health clinics) because they wish to protect their members from having to compete to provide even the most routine forms of health care.

Most of all, though, the GOP must understand that the deficit is first and foremost a product of health-care spending. If conservatives are serious about restoring the party's credibility, then we ought to be worrying about how to bring costs under control without compromising the quality of care. There are many problems calling for conservative solutions… if only the GOP would have the political courage to push for change.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has just about had it with his colleagues in the Senate, saying it's high time the upper chamber "gets off their ass" and passes a bill to replace the sequester, which is set to begin taking effect at the end of this week. The sequester, you will remember, is $1.2 trillion in spending cuts that will target the Defense Department and discretionary spending programs over the next 10 years, and do untold damage to the economy. "Where's the president's plan to avoid the sequester?" he asked on Tuesday. "Have you seen one? I haven't seen one. All I've heard is he wants to raise taxes again."President Obama, of course, has proposed two plans that could be used to avoid the sequester, which the administration has warned will lead to a horror show of self-inflicted wounds across the nation, from job cuts to vaccination shortages to flight cancellations. (On Tuesday, federal immigration officials released hundreds of people suspected of entering the country illegally, saying the looming budget cuts were forcing them to reduce costs.) One is a modest, short-term package of spending cuts and tax revenues; the other is his long-term proposal to reduce the deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, which the White House has insisted is still on the table. The long-term plan includes cuts to deficit-busting entitlement programs, as well as new revenue through closing tax loopholes.In other words, Boehner has some options. Which has led Ezra Klein at The Washington Post to admit total bafflement, in a post titled "I don't understand the Republican position on the sequester":

The White House is willing to cut a deal with Republicans that will accomplish 1, 2, 3, and 4. But Republicans don’t want that deal. They'd prefer the sequester to that deal. That means they will get less on 1, basically nothing [on] 2, 4, and 5, and they will actively hurt themselves on 3. So, rather than accomplishing four of their five goals, they’re accomplishing part of one. Some trade. [The Washington Post]

So what do Republicans want? Kevin Drum at Mother Jones says it all comes down to preventing new tax revenue:

I'm confused about the confusion. Republicans have been the anti-tax party for more than 30 years now. They've never been willing to trade tax increases for spending cuts, and they've been vocally, implacably dedicated to this during every budget showdown of the past three years. A deal that includes both spending cuts and tax increases is very much not a policy outcome they vastly prefer. [Mother Jones]

Jonathan Chait at New York agrees, and argues that the party is working against its own interests:

Deepening the bafflement is that the Republicans' apparent approach bears no relation either to political reality or to the party's stated goals. President Obama is offering up something — hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Social Security and Medicare — that Republicans say they want and which (because of their unpopularity) they have proven unable to obtain even when they have had full control of government. They are instead undertaking a public showdown against a figure who is vastly more popular and trusted, who possesses a better platform to communicate his message, and whose message itself — spread the pain among rich and middle class alike, don't cut retirement programs more deeply than needed in order to protect tax loopholes for the rich — commands overwhelmingly higher public support. [New York]

Conservatives, however, argue that Obama's not serious enough about deficit reduction to compromise on taxes. As Conn Carroll at The Washington Examiner writes:

On spending, Obama has offered some very minor entitlement spending cuts in the form of Chained CPI and an increase in the Medicare eligibility age. But neither of these reforms would save much money or change the underlying incentives that drive increased spending. At best they amount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and at worst they would make later reform of the programs more difficult.

The bottom line is that Republicans simply do not believe anything worthwhile can be accomplished on entitlement or tax reform while Obama is in office. So instead of wasting time on big ticket reforms that will never happen, Republicans are fighting to protect what little deficit reduction they’ve already accomplished through the sequester. [Washington Examiner]

For now, it appears Republicans will settle for the sequester itself, even though it is opposed by defense hawks within the party, GOP governors, and Republican moderates. As Dana Milbank at The Washington Post writes:

House Republicans have belatedly embraced the realization that if they do nothing at all, they will be rewarded on Friday with a 2.5 percent cut in all federal spending without coughing up a single dollar in tax increases. They have learned to stop worrying and love the sequester. [The Washington Post]

Sunday, February 24, 2013

..................................................................................................................................Why not wait your turn, Sen. Tom?Posted by Joel Connelly, February 24, 2013Washington once had Republican governors: John Spellman was the most recent. Family, friends and old aides gathered Friday night at the Rainier Club to lift cups to publication of a lucid, readable new Spellman biography by John Hughes, part of the Washington State Heritage Center Legacy Project.Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom, D-Medina, leader of a coalition of Republicans and dissident Democrats that runs the Legislature’s upper chamber, was on hand.After a series of graceful reminiscences, guests lined up to get books autographed by Spellman and Hughes. It was a fun line to be in. Stories were told. There was ribbing and much laughter. The hearts of 1980's-era Spellman administration tough guys have softened with time. Nobody minded the wait.One person, apparently, did mind. Sen. Tom strolled up to the front of the line, interposed himself, exchanged pleasantries with Spellman and Hughes, and had his book autographed.The line crashing by Tom did not go unnoticed, and elicited a bit of amusement from fellow guests. “If he were a better politician, he would have worked the line,” joked one esteemed Seattle editor/writer on the drive home.Of course, it had been a busy day for the ruling Senate coalition headed by Tom. One Senate committee had just shot down a bevy of proposed gun safety bills. On a party-line vote, another passed out legislation that would roll back a new Seattle ordinance which allows employees to earn time off for sickness or care of a sick kid.Still, the editor’s point was well taken. Tom could have learned something, and might still if he curls up with his autographed copy of “John Spellman: Politics Never Broke His Heart.” Some suggested lessons:–Spellman governed, even at high political cost. He raised taxes in the midst of a recession, to maintain state services and particularly to maintain Washington’s first-rate public colleges. The current Legislature, and its immediate predecessors, have decimated support for higher ed and thrown huge tuition burdens on students.–Spellman did not equate destruction of the environment with economic growth. He defied legislative Republicans, and blocked a plan to build huge offshore oil drilling platforms at Cherry Point near Bellingham. It would have filled in and wrecked the state’s finest herring spawning ground.–Spellman had a sense of social justice, supporting minority hiring and giving business to minority contractors, at a time when the construction industry and its unions were 99 percent white — and wanted to keep it that way.–Spellman did not sacrifice his principles to the political opportunity of the moment. As a result, he elicited a tribal loyalty among those who worked for him. The Rainier Club gathering ended festivities by singing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”The Irish are, after all, a tribe.

Nobody wants it, but here it comes. Why? Because the only way to stop it is to cut a budget deal, and there aren’t a lot of deals getting cut in Congress these days.

Each vote carries its own risk-to-reward ratio in politics, and neither Republicans nor Democrats see much percentage in budging an inch. Everyone wants budget cuts, but nobody wants his or her budget cut. Everyone wants “entitlement reform,” but nobody wants Social Security or Medicare touched. Everyone pays lip service to “tax reform,” until it means your mortgage deduction, your pretax health benefit or your business write-off.

Everybody loves bipartisanship, but nobody wants to compromise on his or her principles. And what incentive is there to concede anything if you’re an average member of Congress who represents a politically gerry-mandered district that is not even remotely competitive?

So instead of putting in some overtime this past week and working out a last-minute deal, members of Congress returned home to play to their respective home-crowd bases and blame the intransigence of the other side.In short, damage control.

Only a few short months ago, in the run-up to the “fiscal cliff” crisis, even conservative Republicans were making noises about raising new revenues by overhauling the tax code. Now, new revenues are off the table. Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, say entitlements are off the table. They’re mostly sticking to a peculiar Washington accounting sophistry that says it doesn’t add to the debt to continue paying out more in Social Security benefits than the system takes in from our payroll deductions. From a strictly inside-the-beltway calculation, the Zen-like beauty of the sequester is that it requires no compromises, no concessions and no action. It’s automatic, a consequence of a 2011 budget deal that said if we can’t get to a deal, then this dreaded thing would happen. The dreaded thing was supposed to be so dreadful it would spur a deal. But it didn’t — just another sign of how broken things are in Washington.

Minnesota, which ranks 49th in per capita federal spending, won’t fare as badly as most other states. But some estimates calculate more than 16,000 job losses in the state this year, along with $821 million in lost income, $117 million in lost grants and programs, and hundreds of million more in lost contracts and business.

And all of this comes out of a category of spending that accounts for only a third of the federal budget. The real debt-drivers aren’t being touched.

How bad will it be? Nobody really knows, and the effects will roll out slowly, like the FAA furloughs that could reduce flights at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and close four air-traffic-control towers in Minnesota.

Only later will we know if the risk-benefit equation has been altered in Congress, and in which direction. Peterson, a realist, sees sequestration as the only viable way to make painful budget cuts in the current weak-kneed political climate. But even he holds out hope for something more rational. “Depending on how it sorts out,” he said, “that may build some pressure to do something.”

Saturday, February 23, 2013

..................................................................................................................................Congress offers to cut its payBy Kay Bell, February 21, 2013Some Senators and Republicans might have finally found something that could improve their standing among the public.Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have proposed that they take a pay cut.S. 65, introduced by Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, would repeal the law that allows for automatic lawmaker pay hikes.There are several companion versions of the measure on the House side.Another Senate bill, S. 124 by Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., would withhold Capitol Hill paychecks for each chamber if its members are unable to pass a budget resolution. A similar "No Budget, No Pay" bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn. The H.R. 310 has 59 bipartisan cosponsors.And H.R. 396, introduced by Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kan., who is a member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee and the House Republican Conference Vice Chair, would cut Congress' annual pay 20 percent and keep it from going up until there was no deficit in the previous fiscal year."This bill seeks to address Washington's poor fiscal record and encourage members of Congress to get serious about balancing the budget," Jenkins said in a statement upon introducing the bill. She also noted that her measure "goes a step further than other Congressional pay proposals by restricting member pay to 2000 levels, the last time Congress balanced the budget."While all these no-pay proposals make for good sound bites to feed a public that has a very low opinion of federal lawmakers, there are two problems with all the measures.First, such pay limits would have little effect on the federal bottom line.Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, told The Hill newspaper that cutting congressional salaries provides a minuscule amount of savings in the entire budget.And second, there's no chance any of these no-pay bills will pass either the House or Senate.Nice try, Congress, but we're wise to your shenanigans. The only sure-fire way to make sure representatives and senators don't get paid is to vote them out of office.
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Thursday, February 21, 2013

..................................................................................................................................‘Lying whore:’ Eyman’s anti-Inslee tantrumPosted by Joel Connelly, February 21, 2013Initiative promoter Tim Eyman and Spokane City Councilman Mike Fagan sent out a broadside Thursday calling newly elected Gov. Jay Inslee a “lying whore” in perhaps the most vulgar and juvenile bid for attention that Olympia has witnessed in years.Eyman has resorted to invective many times before and has a history of showering abuse on state, county and local public officials. But the latest missive will be appreciated mainly by connoisseurs of wretched excess.When King County Council members Jane Hague and Kathy Lambert voted for a temporary $20 car tab fee — to prevent deep cuts in pubic [sic] transit — Eyman published a wanted-style poster with the word “LIAR!” in bold face beneath pictures of the two council members, both of them Republicans.The latest outburst is apparently in reaction to state House Democrats’ unveiling of a transportation package that would raise the gas tax by 10 cents a gallon. It is the first step in what’s expected to be a lengthy tinkering period involving both houses of the Legislature and the governor.Inslee said on Wednesday that he looks forward to “robust dialogue.” The governor emphasized, however, that a growing state needs to grow its infrastructure, especially when 25 percent of its jobs are supported by international trade through its ports.“We clearly need to address the growing maintenance and preservation needs in our current infrastructure, the big-ticket needs to improve freight mobility across our state, and the unmet needs for sustainable transportation such as pedestrian and bicycle improvements,” Inslee said in a statement. “We can’t afford not to take action and this is a job I expect the Legislature to accomplish.”Eyman and Fagan have morphed that into a call for new taxes.“Candidate Inslee repeatedly promised to veto any tax increase. He said no way to higher transportation taxes in 2013,” said Eyman and Fagan. “Inslee said he’d grow jobs to generate more tax revenue. What a lying whore he turned out to be. In recent weeks, he’s made it clear he’ll sign any tax increase the Legislature unilaterally imposes.”Eyman feeds on attention, which may explain the vulgar hyperbole. The joke has long been that the most dangerous ground to occupy in the state capital is between Eyman and a TV camera.Successful on tax measures, Eyman has repeatedly lost at the ballot box with measures designed to impede public transportation spending, the most recent a bid to block Sound Transit light rail from crossing Lake Washington and to block tolling on the I-90 bridge and S.R. 167.Eyman has bombarded news outlets with near-daily releases, one of which arrived as President Obama was getting ready to be sworn in for a second term.Eyman has been swarming the state’s body politic since 1999, but may find his nimbus growing a little thin. He has found deep pockets: Big Oil and the Beer Institute helped fuel his last initiative requiring a legislative “supermajority” to raise taxes. Real estate kingpin Kemper Freeman Jr. kicked in $1 million to the transportation measure.But the need for the state to spend more on K-12 schools, public colleges and universities and a creaky transportation infrastructure is there for all to see.“He (Eyman) has already shown he has nothing to contribute to a sane discussion about the value of public services in our state,” said Andrew Villeneuve, director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, a group of youthful web activists who have critiqued Eyman initiatives for years.A statewide poll by the respected Fairbank Maslin firm, released Thursday, showed Washington voters in strong support of community and four-year colleges: 56 percent of those surveyed said the state has not done enough to support public higher education.The poll found that 64 percent of those surveyed would be “more favorably” disposed toward members of the Legislature who support higher education. It found that a majority of the state’s residents have a personal connection to either a community college or a four-year college.“What this research shows us is that voters clearly and deeply understand the connection between access to quality higher education and economic success for their families,” said Bill Lyne, president of the United Faculty of Washington.Patrick Stickney, a Western Washington University junior active in student government, was encouraged at the poll figures, but argued that it brings out a blunt truth:“Combined with the billion-plus dollars the state must put into K-12 education, it is obvious that the state must raise new revenue to make the investments necessary for a successful Washington.”It will be interesting to see the reaction that Republicans and The Seattle Times, both of which have endorsed Eyman initiatives, have to the “lying whore” release . . . and whether the Association of Washington Business continues to let itself be used to channel money into his initiative campaigns.
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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

..................................................................................................................................Privacy and Politics: The President Deserves Some Non-Transparency TimeBy Steven Kurlander, February 20, 2013It was President's Days Weekend and many Americans took advantage of the three day holiday to take a mini-vacation, recharge their batteries, and relax.So did President Obama, who headed south without his wife and girls (who were on a ski vacation themselves) to the very ritzy Floridian Golf Club near West Palm Beach to relax, take some golf lessons from renowned master teacher Butch Harmon-and to play a round with Tiger Woods too.But there was something different about this vacation. This trip, the president kept in total seclusion from the withering scrutiny of the press-and the loud protests that followed from reporters became news itself.Anyone who works as hard as the president deserves to take time off from the job to gain some solitude and relaxation.But anytime this president takes time off, he gets called out for not staying in Washington to work on our nation's ills.As usual, this round of golf was met with the same criticism he endures every time he hits the links-that he has played too much golf while he has been president. He's shot over a 100 rounds during his first term in office, but that's not even close to 1200 rounds played by President Woodrow Wilson and the over 800 rounds played by President Eisenhower while they occupied the White House.This trip, there was also condemnation that the president was a hypocrite for golfing at a resort patronized by some of American's most affluent people. To play and partake of the amenities there, it costs its members $50,000 to join the club, plus annual dues of $15,000. Obama, who ran on the platform of increasing taxes on the richest Americans, was called an "elitist" and "hypocrite" by Tea Party pundits for staying at the resort.And there were questions about the president (and Congress too) taking time off as negotiations stalled to avoid a sequestration that threatens major defense cuts and shutdown of major government programs that is due to take place on March 1st. And after all, he just had a vacation in Hawaii.But the president was really called on the carpet this trip in terms of transparency. The White House Press Corps were told to stay away and altogether leave Obama alone during the trip. Fox correspondent and White House Correspondents Association president Ed Henry screamed foul, expressing Corps' "extreme frustration" about having no access to the president.While most point to the lack of civil discourse and compromise as one of the major problems facing both Washington and politics in general, the Press Corps' beef with the president going into seclusion pointed to another big problem in our Realty TV politics today-that our politicians are not afforded anytime off from their jobs or any chance of seclusion that allows them quiet introspection and thought.The best part of playing golf to most hackers, including the president, is getting away for a few hours from the world to drive, hit and putt a small, dimpled ball accurately, partake in the fresh air, beer and camaraderie. Having a bunch of reporters and cameras following the president around on the course would have destroyed all that.And golfing is a great way to get business down away from the office too. If golfing and some time off help the president stayed focused, then fine. One suggestion: instead of Tiger, the president should sneak away from Washington and play a round or two soon with John Boehner and maybe Eric Cantor too, and work on both his golf game and getting this country moving again.
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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says President Barack Obama's campaign was "eight, maybe 10 years, ahead" of the Republican Party last year in understanding the rapidly changing face of the American electorate.

Gingrich tells "CBS This Morning" that GOP strategists have failed to respond effectively to the new demographic landscape.

Gingrich, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination, says poor strategy and questionable consulting cost the Republicans at least nine U.S. Senate seats that "we should have won."

He says, "You can't just be an opposition party. You have to be a party that has a better alternative."

Gingrich says Democrats have more readily adapted to a voting public that is "in many ways younger, more Latino, more African-American, than Republican strategists are capable of dealing with."

Three years after easing limits on corporate political donations in the Citizens United decision, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to consider whether to lift caps on how much individuals may contribute to candidates.In a brief order, the court agreed to hear McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a challenge by Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon and the Republican National Committee to limits on aggregate donations over a two-year period.A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., in September had rejected McCutcheon’s argument that capping donations violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.But if the Supreme Court disagrees, it could use the case to change part of its landmark 1976 decision, Buckley v. Valeo, that upheld such caps, which are sums in the mid-five figures.“It’s not a watershed case in the sense Citizens United was, but it could extend that case’s logic to contribution limits, which could be very significant,” Richard Hasen, a campaign finance expert and law professor at the University of California at Irvine, said in a phone interview.The Citizens United case was decided in 2010 by a 5-4 vote, and removed limits on independent expenditures made by companies and unions to support or oppose political candidates. The court based its ruling on a First Amendment right to free speech.Critics of the position taken by the RNC and McCutcheon believe that lifting contribution limits could allow individual donors undue influence.“If the Supreme Court reverses its past ruling in Buckley, the Court would do extraordinary damage to the nation’s ability to prevent the corruption of federal officeholders and government decisions,” Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, said in a statement. The group plans to submit a brief urging the court to uphold the limits, he said.The Democratic National Committee declined to comment.McCutcheon is chief executive of Coalmont Electrical Development Co., a general contractor in McCalla, Ala., located about 20 miles southwest of Birmingham.He contributed $33,088 to 16 candidates in the 2012 election cycle. Many donations were in increments of $1,776, referring to the year the Declaration of Independence was signed.McCutcheon had wanted to contribute another $21,312 to 12 more candidates and make donations to the RNC and to committees supporting Republican candidates. But those contributions would have caused McCutcheon to run afoul of a $46,200 limit on contributions to candidate committees.Another limit capped overall contributions to national political parties, state political parties and nonparty political committees at $70,800, so long as no more than $46,200 goes to the latter two groups.“I am very glad and excited that our case and other cases are moving forward as expected,” McCutcheon said in an email.Lifting the limits could allow individuals to funnel more money overall to candidates. For example, an individual could choose to donate $1 million to 400 candidates in $2,500 increments, but not donate $1 million to a single candidate.“The limits distort the system by forcing people to give money to super-PACs and advocacy groups, when they would rather give money to individual candidates and parties,” James Bopp, a lawyer for McCutcheon and the RNC, said in a phone interview.“That drives money away from the most accountable and transparent actors in our political system, in favor of entities that are basically unaccountable to the voter,” he added.Super-PACs are a type of political action committee spawned in part by the Citizens United decision.More than a dozen of these groups spent nearly half a billion dollars to support Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.Some pro-Republican groups raised seven-figure sums monthly from Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife. A super-PAC supporting President Barack Obama collected million-dollar contributions from Hollywood and Silicon Valley.The Supreme Court is expected to decide the McCutcheon case in its next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2014.The case is McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-536.
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Monday, February 18, 2013

..................................................................................................................................Putting Economics Before PoliticsBy James Clingman,, February 18, 2013It has always been intriguing to me that we have elected thousands of Black politicians since Reconstruction, especially since 1970, while the number of Black economic advocates pales in comparison. Understanding that Black economic advocates are not elected per se, it makes sense to me that if economics is at the bottom of everything in this country, Black people should have at least as many Black economists, economic advocates, and economic literacy instructors as we do politicians.Marcus Garvey said, “The most important area for the exercise of independent effort is economic. After a people have established successfully a firm industrial foundation they naturally turn to politics and society, but not first to society and politics, because the two latter cannot exist without the former.” Obviously we should have listened to and followed Garvey’s advice; he was one of our most powerful and committed economic advocates.There were many others who attempted to school us on the importance of economic empowerment, folks such as Maria Stewart, William Wells-Brown, T. Thomas Fortune, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and Mary McLeod Bethune. Today, we few who are striving to do the same. But are we listening to them and following their advice?We would much rather listen – and that’s all we do – to the empty rhetoric of political hacks and rely on our emotions rather than our intellect to make decisions about the direction we will take vis-à-vis our votes. We also fail to properly align our priorities, as Garvey suggested, in an effort to achieve true economic freedom.Our present condition, both economic and political, is dire. Unfortunately, we are being led to believe that politics is the answer and that some politician will solve our issues for us. Even worse is the fact that some of us truly believe that nonsense.My local newspaper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, featured a story that questioned why no Blacks were running for mayor this year. The piece cited the fact that Black people comprise nearly 50 percent of this city’s population, and although we have had a Black mayor for nearly eight years, the paper posed the question and slanted the story as though it was truly disheartened at the lack of a Black candidate this time. Let that marinate a little while.Since when has anyone other than Black folks been concerned about the absence of Black political candidates in any race? We don’t see many stories in dominant media dealing with the dearth of Black ownership of major corporations, the overwhelming number of Black owned businesses that have only one employee, or the disparities of the prison industrial complex. So why this concern in politics? Could it be that Black politics is viewed as nonthreatening, while Black economics is viewed just the opposite? Could it be that Black politics is full of emotion and symbolism, while Black economics is pragmatic and substantive in nature?Is economic empowerment threatening? The following quote from George Meany, AFL-CIO president, in 1969, might answer that question for us. “At its worst, ‘black capitalism’ is a dangerous, divisive delusion – offered as a panacea by extremists, both black and white…Attempts to build economic enclaves with substantial federal tax subsidies within specific geographically limited ghetto areas is apartheid, anti-democratic nonsense.”Had enough yet? It’s easy to see that Black people in 2013 are used and misused by the political system. All of you emotionally engaged political devotees please sit down for this next statement. It matters not what “color” a politician is, even the color of the person who resides in the White House. Black folks had better get that through our thick heads and start pursuing an economic agenda, first, as Garvey said, and then a political one. Believe me, when a group’s economics is in order, their politics will fall in line accordingly.For the life of me I cannot fathom why Black folks in this country, after all that we have seen and experienced, are still waiting on politics to save us. And it’s hard to understand why we think Black politicians will do right by Black people, simply because of their skin color. To make matters worse, we are still trying to figure out “Who is Black in America?” despite the so-called “one drop” rule, which was made up by White people. He who defines you controls you. (By the way, wouldn’t the “one drop” rule make everyone in the world Black, since mankind started in Africa? Just a thought.) Being Black is not as much about skin color as it is about consciousness.Economics is about empowerment, and our dollars should be used more wisely to that end. Politics is about self-interest, and our votes should reflect that truth. White politicians can help Black people just like Black politicians can. The same applies for White and Black capitalists. The question is, “Will they?”The best help is self-help, however. We must organize and rally around basic economic principles. And until we are really serious about playing the politics game, we must wean ourselves off the milk and pabulum of political dependence, and get on a steady diet of cooperative economics and mutual support.
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The marches for immigration reform are gone. And so is the multiplicity of voices and faces.

By Gregory Rodriguez, February 18, 2013

In 2006, the last time Congress took a serious look at comprehensive immigration reform, hundreds of thousands of immigrants, legal and illegal, marched through the streets of the nation's cities. The resulting media coverage was filled with stories about real people — brown people! — whose lives would be affected by the proposed legislation. It was one of those rare moments when the public could witness the intersection of grass-roots movements, insider political maneuvering and their human consequences. But that year's push for reform wound up going nowhere.So far in the current debate over immigration reform, the immigrant story you're most likely to hear is that of the Cuban American senator from Florida, Republican Marco Rubio. The marches are gone. And so is the multiplicity of voices and faces.There's something disembodied and disconnected about the discussion now. Other than the president's quick hop to Nevada to give his post-second-inaugural immigration speech some local color, the discussion has been conducted almost exclusively inside the Beltway and behind closed doors. Quick, what are the terms of the "bipartisan framework"?If reform does come this year, it'll be absent any pretense that it was accomplished for the people or by the people, except very indirectly. That's because we all know that reform is advancing not because of human needs but because of political needs: Specifically, the Republicans' desperation to save their reputation with Latino voters.If you're in favor of comprehensive reform — as I am — you couldn't care less how it happens, as long as it happens. But there's real danger that fixing immigration in an inside-the-Beltway manner may worsen an even bigger problem: the growing disconnect between the public and politics.The way immigration is being debated is exactly why so many Americans are so cynical about the political process. Civic do-gooders are constantly telling us how important it is to engage in our public institutions, to make our voices heard. We Americans want to believe that, but then we see major national policy made with little public input, and we rightly suspect that the political class ultimately works for the greater glory of the political class. Does it even matter if we get involved?It should. Yes, grass-roots public debates, let alone mass marches, are messy. The messaging isn't always clear or smooth. Real people don't have press secretaries or public relations consultants. Their arguing points arise from textured and nuanced real-life situations that don't lend themselves to the purist positions held by the ideological extremes, which drown out real discussion in our national dialogue. Finding lasting solutions to problems requires going into the weeds.One reason our politics keep failing to produce nuanced solutions is that hot-button issues are raised to the level of abstraction. Take the specific applications to specific lives out of the conversation and polarization results, shades of gray disappear. Does it ever seem to you that the people who do engage in debates most fiercely on such issues as abortion or gay marriage are the very people who are least likely to be personally grappling with the issue?One sure sign of the need for a reality check in the immigration debate is the number of politicians and policies claiming to serve the interests of a national "Latino community." That "community" — as a single entity — is a myth. All 50 million Latinos can't be reduced to a single-issue interest group.Such reductionism allows Washington to hijack "Latinos" for its own purposes. It allows the media to entertain the absurd notion that throngs of mestizo Mexican Americans from California will one day help carry a white Cuban U.S. senator from Florida to the White House, because they're all Latino. It enables the Republican Party to think that supporting immigration reform is enough of a solution to having become a de facto white race party.The best check on such nonsense is the public, and especially those members of the public who would be affected by the policies under construction. The people need to be engaged not only to counter Washington myth-making but to make sure that whatever reform is produced serves actual human constituents, distinct human dilemmas. Dehumanized debates, after all, too often produce dehumanizing policies.
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Sunday, February 17, 2013

..................................................................................................................................Can Obama Save Politics?By Scott Warren, February 17, 2013President Obama's State of the Union was aggressive and meaty. From immigration reform to gun control, to raising the minimum wage and universal pre-school education, Obama clearly wants to make a mark in his second term. But regardless of the policy ambitions, Obama raised another theme that should, but has not yet, received bi-partisan support: reigniting citizen involvement in our political process.One of the only subjects that Democrats and Republicans agree on right now is that our political process is broken. After the debacle of the fiscal cliff crisis, Public Policy Polling found that Americans hold Congress in less regard than everything from cockroaches to the NFL replacement referees. Only 9 percent of Americans approve of the job of our Congress. A recent Gallup poll showed that only 19 percent of Americans trust the government in Washington to do what is right. The result, understandably, has been the American public largely divorcing itself from the process. More than 40 percent of the electorate, or more than 80 million eligible voters, stayed home on Election Day, meaning that more people did not vote than voted for Barack Obama.Obama seems to get this. He knows that the electorate is disenchanted, and has continuously stated that we deserve better. And in the State of the Union, he hinted at his solution to our broken political system -- and it's not just our elected leaders acting like adults. He postulated that the solution to our political problems lies with the American citizenry, stating that, "We may do different jobs, and wear different uniforms, and hold different views than the person beside us. But as Americans, we all share the same proud title: We are citizens... (and) it remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the next great chapter in our American story."In other words, in order to save politics, we have the obligation to get more political. We can't just blame our politicians.Given the president's history, this emphasis makes sense. He started his career as a community organizer in Chicago, attempting to empower low-income housing compounds in the Rosewood area with political rights to advance their own material lot. His first presidential campaign was decidedly grassroots focused, as everyday citizens carried him to power over the establishment backed Hillary Clinton. He gets that citizen involvement is necessary for a healthy democracy. But despite this reality, after Obama took office, he did relatively little to encourage citizen involvement in his first term. Instead his approach was to wheel and deal in the halls of Washington, working in the halls of Congress, both compromising and strong-arming, to pass legislation like the stimulus package and health care reform. Political change has not included citizen action.It is clear that Obama wants to be a transformational leader. In a 2008 interview before the Nevada caucuses, he noted that, "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not." Many have asserted that the first month of Obama's second term, from his inaugural to this State of the Union, has been his attempt to become the left's answer to Reagan. But if Obama really wants to transform our political process, legislation is not enough. He should spend the next four years lending credence to words he gave in his second inaugural, that "Citizens have the power to set this country's course." Transformative leadership involves restoring America's faith in our government.Obama can take numerous steps to revitalize citizen involvement. First, he needs to emphasize the oft-repeated but rarely followed refrain that all change is local. We have a bias in this country to focus on national politics, but it is state legislators and city council members that have the ability to impact everyday lives. In the wake of the election, Obama campaigners have morphed his campaign into a new entity, Organizing for Action. But solely encouraging citizens to organize for Obama-supported initiatives will do little to catalyze overall citizen engagement. Encouraging citizens to engage in their communities is a necessity, regardless of political affiliation.He can also use his bully pulpit to encourage "democracy-building" initiatives like an emphasis on civic education and a more balanced media. Finally, he can make good on promises to reform our actual election system, getting rid of the long lines that supposedly reduced voting rates in states like Florida by almost 200,000 people. We need to make it easier for people to actually participate.None of this is particularly sexy. For his own legacy, it might be preferable to pass landmark gun control legislation, take on climate change and reform the tax code. This is all necessary. But for the long-term health of our country's political system, nothing would be more transformative, and more challenging, than revitalizing our democracy.
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..................................................................................................................................Reaganism After ReaganBy Ramesh Ponnuru, February 17, 2013Today’s Republicans are very good at tending the fire of Ronald Reagan’s memory but not nearly as good at learning from his successes. They slavishly adhere to the economic program that Reagan developed to meet the challenges of the late 1970s and early 1980s, ignoring the fact that he largely overcame those challenges, and now we have new ones. It’s because Republicans have not moved on from that time that Senators Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, in their responses to the State of the Union address last week, offered so few new ideas.When Reagan cut rates for everyone, the top tax rate was 70 percent and the income tax was the biggest tax most people paid. Now neither of those things is true: For most of the last decade the top rate has been 35 percent, and the payroll tax is larger than the income tax for most people. Yet Republicans have treated the income tax as the same impediment to economic growth and middle-class millstone that it was in Reagan’s day. House Republicans have repeatedly voted to bring the top rate down still further, to 25 percent.A Republican Party attentive to today’s problems rather than yesterday’s would work to lighten the burden of the payroll tax, not just the income tax. An expanded child tax credit that offset the burden of both taxes would be the kind of broad-based middle-class tax relief that Reagan delivered. Republicans should make room for this idea in their budgets, even if it means giving up on the idea of a 25 percent top tax rate.When Reagan took office, he could have confidence in John F. Kennedy’s conviction that a rising tide would lift all boats. In more recent years, though, economic growth hasn’t always raised wages for most people. The rising cost of health insurance has eaten up raises. Controlling the cost of health care has to be a bigger part of the Republican agenda now that it’s a bigger portion of the economy. An important first step would be to change the existing tax break for health insurance so that people would be able to pocket the savings if they chose cheaper plans.Conservative views of monetary policy are also stuck in the late 1970s. From 1979 to 1981, inflation hit double digits three years in a row. Tighter money was the answer. To judge from the rhetoric of most Republican politicians, you would think we were again suffering from galloping inflation. The average annual inflation rate over the last five years has been just 2 percent. You would have to go back a long time to find the last period of similarly low inflation. Today nominal spending — the total amount of dollars circulating in the economy both for consumption and investment — has fallen well below its path before the financial crisis and the recession. That’s the reverse of the pattern of the late 1970s.Trying to boost economic growth through looser money is usually a mistake, as Reaganites rightly argued. They were right, too, to think that the Federal Reserve should make its actions predictable by adhering to a rule rather than improvising depending on its assessment of current conditions. The best way to put those impulses into practice is to require the Fed to stabilize the growth of nominal spending. That rule would allow looser money only when nominal spending is depressed. Keeping nominal spending on track is more or less what the Fed did from 1984 through 2007, a period that Republicans sometimes call the Reagan boom (since they see Bill Clinton as having largely kept his policies) and that economists generally call the Great Moderation. Relatively stable nominal spending growth promoted relatively stable economic growth, and it can again.The Republican economic program of the 1980s also fought against government-imposed restrictions on economic activity: decontrolling energy prices, for example. Today we should target different restrictions. Software patents have become a source of unproductive litigation that entrenches large tech companies and inhibits creativity. Republicans shouldn’t support those patents. Economic growth has to trump corporate executives’ campaign donations.Conservatives should retain their skepticism about government intervention, the preference for letting markets direct economic resources and the zeal for ending government-created barriers to economic growth that they inherited from Reagan. In his first Inaugural Address, Reagan famously said that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” The less famous yet crucial beginning of that sentence was “in our present crisis.” The question is whether conservatism revives by attending to today’s conditions, or becomes something withered and dead.
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..................................................................................................................................The End of a Catholic MomentBy Ross Douthat, February 16, 2013The last time the Chair of St. Peter stood vacant, during Pope John Paul II’s funeral in 2005, the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed a wave of unusually favorable coverage from the American press. The Polish pope had a way of disarming even his most stringent critics, and that power extended beyond his death, turning his funeral into a made-for-television spectacle that almost felt like an infomercial for the Catholic faith.Perhaps not coincidentally, the mid-2000s were the last time the Catholic vision of the good society — more egalitarian than American conservatism and more moralistic than American liberalism — enjoyed real influence in U.S. politics. At the time of John Paul’s death, the Republican Party’s agenda was still stamped by George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” which offered a right-of-center approach to Catholic ideas about social justice. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, was looking for ways to woo the “values voters” (many of them Catholic) who had just helped Bush win re-election, and prominent Democrats were calling for a friendlier attitude toward religion and a bigger tent on social issues.That was a long eight years ago. Since then, the sex abuse scandals that shadowed John Paul’s last years have become the defining story of his successor’s papacy, and the unexpected abdication of Benedict XVI has only confirmed the narrative of a church in disarray. His predecessor was buried amid reverent coverage from secular outlets, but the current pope can expect a send-off marked by sourness and shrugs.The collapse in the church’s reputation has coincided with a substantial loss of Catholic influence in American political debates. Whereas eight years ago, a Catholic view of economics and culture represented a center that both parties hoped to claim, today’s Republicans are more likely to channel Ayn Rand than Thomas Aquinas, and a strident social liberalism holds the whip hand in the Democratic Party.Indeed, between Mitt Romney’s comments about the mooching 47 percent and the White House’s cynical decision to energize its base by picking fights over abortion and contraception, both parties spent 2012 effectively running against Catholic ideas about the common good.This transformation suggests that we may have reached the end of a distinctive “Catholic moment” (to repurpose a phrase from the late Catholic priest-intellectual Richard John Neuhaus) in American politics, one that began in the 1980s after John Paul’s ascension to the papacy and the migration of many Catholic “Reagan Democrats” into the Republican Party.This was hardly the first era when Catholic ideas shaped American debates. (New Deal-era liberalism, for instance, owed a major debt to Catholic social thought.) But it was the first era when the Catholic vote was both frequently decisive and genuinely up for grabs, and it was an era when Catholic debates and personalities filled the vacuum left by the decline of the Protestant mainline.The fact that the Second Vatican Council had left the church internally divided limited Catholic influence in some ways but magnified it in others. Because the church’s divisions often mirrored the country’s, a politician who captured the typical Catholic voter was probably well on his way to victory, and so would-be leaders of both parties had every incentive to frame their positions in Catholic-friendly terms. The church might not always be speaking with one voice, but both left and right tried to borrow its language.If this era is now passing, and Catholic ideas are becoming more marginal to our politics, it’s partially because institutional Christianity is weaker over all than a generation ago, and partially because Catholicism’s leaders have done their part, and then some, to hasten that de-Christianization. Any church that presides over a huge cover-up of sex abuse can hardly complain when its worldview is regarded with suspicion. The present pope has too often been scapegoated for the sex abuse crisis, but America’s bishops have if anything gotten off too easily, and even now seem insufficiently chastened for their sins.The recent turn away from Catholic ideas has also been furthered by a political class that never particularly cared for them in the first place. Even in a more unchurched America, a synthesis of social conservatism and more egalitarian-minded economic policies could have a great deal of mass appeal. But our elites seem mostly relieved to stop paying lip service to the Catholic synthesis: professional Republicans are more libertarian than their constituents, professional Democrats are more secular than their party’s rank-and-file, and professional centrists get their encyclicals from Michael Bloomberg rather than the Vatican.Nothing that happens in Rome over the next few months is likely to convert the Acela Corridor’s donors and strategists and think tankers to a more Catholic-friendly worldview. The next pope may be more effective than Benedict, or he may be clumsier; he may improve the church’s image in this country, or he may worsen it.But if there is another Catholic moment waiting in our nation’s future, it can only be made by Americans themselves.
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